SCOTTISH Labour must confirm whether they support an “appalling” plan to introduce hospital league tables in England, the Greens have said.
UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting plans to publish football-style tables of the best and worst-performing hospitals south of the Border and sack “persistently failing managers”, prompting fury from NHS bosses and staff who fear struggling trusts being “named and shamed”.
The league table will be based on metrics such as how long patients have to wait for A&E treatment, surgery and other care, the state of the trust’s finances and also how good its leadership is judged to be.
Green MSP Gillian Mackay has said Scottish Labour must come clean and explain whether they support the “dangerous” move.
She told The National: “Trying to pit NHS hospitals against each other like some kind of game is appalling. These are vital healthcare services, not the Premier League.
“We all know our NHS is struggling; from dwindling staff numbers due to a disastrous Brexit to increasing waiting times after COVID, it's clear that something needs to change, but turning our NHS into a competition is obviously not the answer.
“There is a real danger that by creating league tables like this we will further entrench health inequalities and make it harder for our NHS to recruit and retain staff.
The National has approached the Scottish Government to ask whether it can rule out such a policy being introduced in Scotland.
Scottish Labour have been asked for comment.
SNP MSP Clare Haughey said: "The NHS has felt the full effects of Brexit, a cost of living crisis and a global pandemic; effects that we are still seeing today. That's why the SNP Scottish Government is investing record sums in our health service - £18.2 billion for 2024/25.
"Meanwhile the Labour Party are preoccupied opening the door to privatisation, introducing competition and encouraging greater involvement of private healthcare provides in our NHS.
"This is hardly surprising from the party seeking advice from the person who brought in disastrous PFI contracts, and they clearly have no plan to tackle the challenges facing public services."
Alan Milburn, who was health secretary under Tony Blair and spearheaded private involvement in the NHS, has been appointed lead non-executive member to the board of the Department of Health and Social Care.
As part of Streeting's plan, hospital trusts with good performance, or which raise themselves up the league table, will be rewarded with extra money to buy equipment and repair or construct facilities.
The plan has prompted anger from trust leaders, doctors and nurses, who voiced scepticism that publishing a league table would necessarily expand the provision of high-quality care.
“The prospect of more ‘league tables’ will concern health leaders, as these can strip out important underlying information,” said Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the hospitals group the NHS Confederation.
“NHS staff are doing their very best for patients under very challenging circumstances and we do not want them feeling like they are being named and shamed.”
He added: “League tables in themselves do not lead to improvement.”
Dr Nick Murch, the president of the Society for Acute Medicine, which represents hospital doctors, warned that a league table could make patients shun their local NHS trust, and hit staff morale.
“Penalising and shaming struggling hospitals is simply likely to create division, damage patient confidence and further demoralise staff who are striving to provide good care in an already poor environment,” he said.
